Spain's Podemos party signals the rise of a new political left

Since the financial crisis erupted in 2008, Europe has seen a rise in co-ordinated leftist movements, such as Occupy, getting people out onto the streets to protest against the conservative economic orthodoxy.

Despite being highly visible, those campaigns, for welfare before wealth and people before profits, have found little traction inside the political mainstream. The failure of mainstream political parties to reflect public priorities in policy has led to collapsing support for those parties, and a corresponding collapse in trust in the political institutions (Nardelli, 2014).

However, that has began to change. In time for the European elections, while the world was justifiably worried about the rise of the far right, a new party emerged in Spain. Born out of the Indignados movement, which saw as many as 8 million people take to the streets across Spain in 2011 and 2012, a new party was formed, called Podemos (Jones, 2014).

Podemos, meaning "We can", marks an important transition. The leftist activists and protesters are shifting from campaigning to political democracy, from protesting to developing policy - trying to turn ideas into action (Pope, 2014). It is a beginning of a fulfilment of the promise shown by leftist campaigns across Europe.

People have shown they are active and engaged. But they're unhappy, and are now they're taking to proposing the solutions themselves, because the establishment hasn't listened, and hasn't reformed to suit the needs of the people.

That disaffection has elsewhere only fed the parties of the far right, who only offer narrow and restrictive responses to poverty and suffering. Those groups, like UKIP, do not break from political orthodoxies and fail to offer positive alternatives. Only the anti-establishment libertarian democratic group Movimento 5 Stelle, of Italy, has succeeded in taking popular support away from those far right groups... so far.

The rising polling strength of Podemos is a positive answer to that right-wing populism, and ought to be a huge boost to those on the left, from progressives to socialists to liberals. They are championing the causes of the left: poverty reduction, the basic income, reducing dependence upon fossil fuels, promoting small, medium and local producers and enterprises along with some sensible public control.

They represent the ideals of the left, backed by a popular movement, bringing activism and political policy together to challenge mainstream methods and orthodox ideas. That is a cause for hope for anyone who is looking for a better future, one oriented more towards people and their needs, than to endless, monotonous, accumulation and consumption.

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+ Alberto Nardelli's 'A crisis of trust - and the rise of new political parties'; in The Guardian; 6 November 2014.

+ Owen Jones' 'Viva Podemos: the left shows it can adapt and thrive in a crisis'; in The Guardian; 16 November 2014.

+ Mike Pope's 'The rise of Podemos and its People's Assembly'; on OpenDemocracy.net; 17 November 2014.